Flowers, challenge coins and other items lay near a photograph of U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom at a makeshift memorial outside of Farragut West Station, near the site where two National Guard members were shot, Monday, Dec. 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

WHEELING — West Virginia Sen. Ryan Weld — also a military veteran — doesn’t object to the Trump administration pausing the Operation Allies Welcome program and other programs to assist Afghan immigrants who aided American efforts in their country.

The suspect in the shootings last week of two West Virginia National Guard members, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, had entered the U.S. through the Operation Allies Welcome program.

Weld, R-Brooke, meanwhile, is a former intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force who served in Afghanistan and joined the U.S. Army National Guard in September. While Weld worked with many Afghans as sources for information during his time in Afghanistan, he noted he did not know Lakanwal.

“The (sources) I worked with are still in Afghanistan,” Weld said. “Looking at this individual, I read that he worked with American forces and personnel from the CIA. I know nothing about his service, or his involvement with Allied Forces.

‘I know he came here in 2021 after the absolutely disastrous collapse and fall of the Afghan government.”

He noted it appears Lakanwal was living with depression and other mental health issues.

“While we need to know why he did what he did, he is not what the focus should be,” Weld continued. “The focus should be celebrating the life of Sarah Beckstrom, and praying for full recovery for Andrew.”

Weld previously sought to help his Afghan source and their family come to America through the Operation Allies Welcome program, the same one that brought Lakanwal to America.

The initiative took place in the final weeks of the war in Afghanistan and saw the airlifting of certain at-risk Afghan civilians (particularly coalition-allied interpreters), employees of the American embassy in Kabul, and some applicants for the U.S. Special Immigrant Visa (SIV).

“Now they (U.S. officials) are going to review the program, and those who came to America,” Weld explained. “I think that obviously this is warranted given what occurred. We obviously cannot harbor anyone with these tendencies to carry out attacks like this.”

Weld didn’t know either of the guard members victimized in the shootings — Sarah Beckstrom, who died from her injuries; or Andrew Wolfe, who remains in critical condition.

“To call it a tragedy doesn’t even cover it,” Weld said. “To lose one West Virginian and to have another still in critical condition is absolutely horrific.”

While there has been a lot of discussion and many court battles over whether National Guard members should be in Washington, Weld cautioned we shouldn’t “lose sight of what happened to those guardsmen, and what West Virginia now feels.”

As for whether the pair should have even been stationed in Washington, Weld points out “they were ordered there.”

“The Trump administration made the decision to bring members of state guards to D.C. to assist,” he said. “I lived in D.C. for a number of years, and crime was pretty rampant in several areas.

“To have them there to make the capital a safer place is a valid mission, and Wolfe and Beckstrom must have thought so as they volunteered to remain there. They could have come home with the vast majority of West Virginians when their orders ended. But they stayed. These individuals thought the mission was so important that they should remain. It doesn’t matter what I think or what anyone else thinks.”